- It’s hard to pinpoint the exact reasons but the company has struggled over the last few years. They have been bleeding clients and top talent. This leads to a negative cycle of constantly being forced to pinch pennies (lack of promotions/raises/bonuses), being short staffed (high attrition, slow to approve backfills and hire), and reacting to client issues instead of driving towards a strong product vision (late nights and weekends plugging holes, most clients are already frustrated with their experience with the product and every issue is framed as urgent in fear of losing another client). That pressure is felt from management on down across all teams.
-The companies strength used to be its culture and people, but most left over the last few years (though there still are some great people here, like at any company). Instead of a strong vibrant culture, with lots of good people encouraging each other, most people are looking to move on to greener pastures.
-The company’s strategy to combat increasingly high employee attrition has been to turn to legal action against employees trying to leave, perhaps out of necessity, instead of looking to fix the issues causing attrition. This is an incredibly negative experience and further fuels the cycle leading the company down its current path. There isn’t much of a precedent for this in our industry and especially not for employees below executive level. It’s a shame a relatively junior employee may be subjected to this.
-Awkward market position/financing. They aren’t large enough to do what they want, but act like a company that is, as if they do 10x their current business. Most other independent adtech companies at this size have been forced to merge or be acquired in order to avoid going out of business or to appease investors. I would have to imagine that is on the horizon for MediaMath, too much outside capital has been invested in a struggling business which isn’t producing results.
